A Siege on Scientific Temperament

Graphical Representation of the Triumph of Myth over Science in India

India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, in his work The Discovery of India, stressed the idea of scientific temper. A mindset that develops free thinking and helps people progress. According to him, it is about being curious, critical, and always interrogating without accepting things blindly and developing intellectual humility - changing our views based on new evidence. He highlighted how most people, including leaders, lack this mindset in the age of science. Further, he explains how it is important not just for science, but also for solving various problems. Later, India became the first and only country to adopt the Scientific Temperament in its constitution. In 1976, it was added as a fundamental duty under the Forty-Second Amendment, Article 51A(h), stating, "[It shall be the duty of every citizen of India] To develop scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry and reform."

Fast forward to 2023, when the NCERT removed the Theory of Evolution and the Periodic Table from school textbooks, until students would voluntarily choose to pursue science majors for higher studies. The expulsion of such foundational topics will lead to a climate fertile for superstition and unreason to grow, according to scientists. 

Before this, in 2018, Uttar Pradesh’s Higher Education Minister Satyapal Singh had demanded the removal of the theory of evolution from the school curriculum, which, according to him, is scientifically wrong, and said, “No one ever saw an ape turning into a human being”. Other leaders from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to his defence on social media. In response, three major scientific bodies —the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), the Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), and the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) — issued a joint statement opposing it. They warned that replacing it with non-scientific explanations and myths would be regressive, and students would remain intellectually handicapped, emphasising that Darwin’s theory is a well-established scientific principle. 

India has seen a surge in the endorsements of pseudoscience by Hindu organisations, political leaders, and academics, especially after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014, blending myths with science, often undermining evidence-based reasoning. In 2017, a High Court Judge, Mahesh Chandra Sharma, said that peacocks reproduce by drinking tears, and the cow should be declared India’s national animal, considering the benefits of its dung and urine. In 2018, the Chief Minister of Tripura, Biplab Deb of the BJP, claimed that television and the internet had existed since the time of the Mahabharata, criticising the attribution of their invention to Westerners rather than ancient Indians. In 2019, BJP Pragya Singh Thakur claimed in an interview with India Today that cow’s urine and dung cured her breast cancer, but oncologists later debunked her claims. 

In January 2019, during the 106th Indian Science Congress held at Andhra University, Vice Chancellor G. Nageshwar Rao cited the birth of Kauravas from a single mother in the Mahabharata as evidence for test tube and stem cell technology in ancient India. He also claimed that the Hindu God Vishnu operated guided missiles and that Ravana from the Ramayana had aircraft and multiple airports, presenting these as scientific facts. During the same conference, geologist Ashu Khosla from Punjab University claimed that the Hindu God Brahma discovered dinosaurs, specifically mentioning a species called Rajasaurus, whose existence is mentioned in ancient Indian texts. The program organisers later disowned these statements, calling them unfortunate. Previously, in 2015, on the same platform, a retired pilot, Captain Anand Bodas, claimed that the Hindu sage Bharadwaj had written aviation guidelines, including radar systems, clothing, and dietary recommendations for ancient Indian pilots about 7,000 years ago, which he presented as modern scientific research. 

In 2014, the then Union Minister of Human Resource Development, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank, stated in the parliament that “science is a dwarf in front of astrology”, calling it the biggest science, and claimed that a Hindu sage had conducted nuclear tests 100,000 years ago. Another Union Minister, Harsh Vardhan, made a claim attributed to Stephen Hawking that the Vedas contained theories that surpassed Einstein’s theory of relativity. 

The most ironic of all was in 2016, in Tokyo, when Hindu priests conducted a yaga aimed at purifying the environment. The ritual involved the burning of wood and ghee, which produced smoke and carbon dioxide emissions. A similar event occurred in Meerut in 2018, where 50 metric tons of wood were burned as part of an ironic ritual aimed at reducing air pollution. 

The Prime Minister himself is not an exception. In 2014, while speaking at a hospital in Mumbai, he cited Lord Ganesha as an example of plastic surgery, endorsing it as proof that ancient India had advanced medical procedures. After the Balakot airstrike in 2019, Modi claimed in an interview that it was his suggestion to conduct the strike on a cloudy day, as clouds and rain can prevent Pakistani radars from detecting Indian fighter jets, emphasising this as his insight. 

The last decade has seen an increase in funding for research institutions focused on studying pseudoscientific topics. The most significant amongst them was the research proposal to examine the benefits of cow’s urine. A 2016 study at Junagadh Agricultural University in Gujarat claimed that researchers have found 3 to 10 milligrams of gold per litre of cow’s urine from the Gir region. However, experts noted this finding as scientifically unsound. In 2020, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indore, introduced a class to impart mathematics with ancient Indian science in the Sanskrit language. In 2023, IIT Kanpur, one of India’s most prestigious institutions, invited Rajiv Malhotra for a guest lecture. Mr. Malhotra is noted for denying the existence of Greek civilisation and endorsing the spiritual concept of the third eye as a substitute for medicine in the past. In the same year, the National Commission for Indian System of Medicine (NCISM), the regulatory body governing the policies of public medical institutions, introduced medical astrology as an elective in the Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medicine and Surgery (BAMS) program. It includes remedies in the form of mantras, amulets with protective powers, rituals, and counselling based on astrological calculations. NCISM faced grave criticisms from doctors and scientists for this. In 2024, IIT Mandi made it mandatory for its students to take up one or two courses from the Indian Knowledge System and Mental Health Applications (IKSMHA) Centre. The course includes the study of the subtle body, reincarnation, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences. The course will be taught by the institute’s Director, Prof. Laxmidhar Behera, who is also a spiritual guru. Prof. Behera once made headlines by blaming non-vegetarians for the landslides in the Himalayas. 

Meanwhile, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the statutory organisation responsible for regulating higher education standards, has asked universities to encourage students to take the Kamdhenu Gau Vigyan Prachar-Prasar Examination, a national-level test on cow science, which involves research on the cow, a sacred animal in Hinduism. The syllabus includes claims that earthquakes happen due to cow slaughter and that the byproducts of cows can cure diseases. 

The growing influence of pseudoscience is part of the BJP’s political project to build a hyper-nationalist narrative of a so-called glorious past to establish ancient Hindu superiority over all other civilisations and religions, a fundamental tool that the fascist forces often rely upon. This assertion hopes to challenge Western dominance in knowledge and aims to rewrite India’s history in a way that strengthens Hindu unity and fosters cultural pride and religious superiority. 

Scientific communities have actively protested against it. But countering its encroachment into academic and scientific spaces is not only challenging but also dangerous. Prominent activists, including Narendra Dabolkar and MM Kalburgi, who fought against superstition and the growing tide of pseudoscience, were murdered, and their killers were linked to Hindu fundamentalist organisations. Many others remain silent due to fear of retaliation, which can take the form of denial of funding and promotional opportunities, or it may be a matter of opportunism.

References

Ali, A., & Sarwar, N. (2023, July 26). Amid Indian nationalism, pseudoscience seeps into academia. Undark Magazine. https://undark.org/2023/07/26/amid-indian-nationalism-pseudoscience-seeps-into-academia/

Bhattacharya, S. (2024, August 14). Indian Government’s Intensifying Attack on Scientific Temperament Worries Scientists: Leaders are making unscientific claims of imaginary technological achievements and exaggerated ideas about ancient Indian knowledge systems to build a hyper-nationalist narrative. The Diplomat. Retrieved May 21, 2025, from https://thediplomat.com/2024/08/indian-governments-intensifying-attack-on-scientific-temperament-worries-scientists/

Kumar, S. (2019). In India, Hindu pride boosts pseudoscience. Science, 363(6428), 679–680. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.363.6428.679

Mudur, G. (2024, March 3). Scientists flag erosion of scientific temper, accuse Modi government of pushing 'false narratives' The Telegraph. https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/scientists-flag-erosion-of-scientific-temper-accuse-modi-government-of-pushing-false-narratives/cid/2004365#goog_rewarded

Sarwar, A. a. a. N. (n.d.). How pseudoscience has seeped into Indian academia. https://science.thewire.in/politics/how-pseudoscience-has-seeped-into-indian-academia/

Why is India dropping evolution and the periodic table from school science? (2023). Nature, 618(7963), 8. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-01750-2